Contemplating Separation? Do This With Your Finances

Things aren’t going well, and you are thinking about separating from your spouse. You have had this thought for a while now and it is becoming more likely that it will happen.  Here are some things you should do.

1. Create a list of all of your personal belongings and assets. Once you have the list you want to categorize each item into the following: ownership(which spouse or joint), acquired during the relationship, brought into the relationship, or inherited. Date everything and photos won’t hurt.
2. Get valuations if necessary.
3. Print off statements for every account: bank, investments, mortgages, debts, insurance, etc.
4. Optional. Book a meeting with your financial advisor(s) together where they review everything with both of you. This will make sure both people know exactly what you both have and prevent people from trying to hide assets or debts or trying to move accounts during the process.
5. Maintain detailed records going forward because the process can be long.
6. Optional. Write out a list of who gets what and make a genuine attempt to split the assets evenly. This step helped me because it is more challenging than you think. You will discover there are items one or both of you will really desire to keep and there will be items both of you might not care about.

This is step two from my blog, https://callumrsutherland.com/blog/310057-5stepswhenseparating. Please click on the link to see the full article.

 

What can’t be touched in a divorce?

 

Unless assets have been commingled during the marriage, the property you had before the marriage and inheritance.

 

What is commingling?

Is mixing things together. For example, a couple enters a relationship with separate bank accounts and then they combine the funds into a joint bank account.

 

Who pays the bills during separation?

 

Typically house and living expenses would be split during this time.

 

What questions do you have? Do you have steps you would add?